ABSTRACT
In nature, mountains, valleys and rivers contribute to landscape diversity. Landscape architecture is responsible for converting natural archetypes into types and including them in socially established, formal, urban natural settings, such as gardens, parks, sacred enclosures etc. The level of conservation of urban nature indicates the intimate and collective relationship that human beings maintain with nature in cities. This chapter focuses on the formal version of urban nature created in Japan; specifically, the Japanese traditional garden, a space created in between nature. It takes up a spatial analysis from a model built on the abstraction of “space in nature”. Concretely, the spatial types of the veil, the clearing and flow are advocated as the spatial components structuring Japanese traditional gardens. It deepens in their ancient sacred archetypes, spatial notions, characteristics and techniques, functions and biocultural diversity. To achieve a comprehensive perspective, the subject has been approached from three complementary spheres: philosophy, design and ecology, showing the case of Kanazawa city. Through reading these three parts, a new sustainable and resilient model of the Japanese traditional garden will emerge, relating them to the current social, environmental and economic debates. The chapter also discusses the need to reinterpret traditional wisdom as the basis for the creation of a new urban nature, and it reveals clues about how to restore kinship with nature.
